Libra
by spoomed
Summary: '...A mere distance that separates them. Yet, it still feels like crossing the entire galaxy as their steps bring them forth toward one another, as they always, perpetually do. It is the laws of the Force which pits them at each end. That draws them together across the expanse of the universe itself.' -A series of encounters and interactions between Rey and Kylo Ren following TLJ.
1. Confluence

_'Where worlds upon worlds once divided the vast space between them, now it is only a mere distance that separates them. Yet, it still feels like crossing the entire galaxy as their steps bring them forth toward one another, as they always, perpetually do._ Always _. It is the laws of the Force which pits them at each end. That draws them together across the expanse of the universe itself.'_

 _-A series of encounters and interactions between Rey and Kylo Ren following TLJ._

* * *

A/N: Doesn't really contain specific spoilers from The Last Jedi, but it helps to know what's happened in the movie for some back story!

 _Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction inspired by and using characters and elements from the Star Wars films, creative property of Lucasfilm and Disney._

* * *

 **|| Confluence ||**

Just as she's settled into the cradle of peace surrounding her, there are footsteps that disturb the silence of the roiling waters coming and going at her feet. She can hear the crunching of sand beneath them as though they were truly there, but she knows they're merely the steps of a shadow. She knows this presence. _Her_ shadow.

"I came here for a moment of quiet. I'd like you to respect that," she speaks softly. Her eyes lower to the receding waters before her. Like a child hiding beneath her covers, perhaps this ghost will leave so long as she doesn't care to look at it.

"Please."

She utters this last word on but a breath.

"So did I."

His follow only after a brief pause.

And so these two wayward phantoms coexist in mutual silence beside each other, separated by impossible planes in between. Even so, it's hard to ignore someone who is _there_. It's strange. It's awkward. Eventually, the unsettling discomfort of half-presence manages to disturb her enough, making the peace she'd sought in her solitude all but futile. She should know better. There's never any peace when _he_ is around.

"What do you see in front of you right now?"

His sudden offhanded question reels her splintering thoughts back to the solid earth she sits on. Her brows furrow at how audacious it is, for him to even ask this at all. Because, yes, she is so prepared to tell him exactly where she is. But then she reconsiders. Surely, he hears the waves rolling onto shore, too. Just as well as she'd heard the coarse sediment grinding beneath his footsteps.

 _What a wonder_.

She almost smiles at the irony once it dawns on her. That they'd both find themselves in search of solitude in the very same moment in two separate points in the whole of the cosmos. Two points that mirrored one another in all the ways their beings had. The symmetry of the Force was astounding.

There are a million worlds in all of the galaxy with a million more shores and water like this. She knows she is in no danger of being found here.

"The sun is setting," she tells him as she looks again toward the horizon before her. "There's...a bit of a breeze. It's a bit cold, but not really." She turns her eyes far down the length of the shore. "The beach seems to go on as far as the eye can see."

"You're alone?"

The coarse sound of his voice draws her attention, and as tempted as she is, she must remind herself not to look at her shadow.

 _Just go away_.

"Yes," she answers with a sparse nod of the head. She hates it. Hates to acknowledge her own loneliness.

The quiet, tentative breath he takes next goes unnoticed by her. "Of _course_ you are..." he utters, and she swears she hears the hint of resentment beneath his ever-bellicose cynicism. Toward her or himself, she couldn't possibly tell. Maybe both.

"Surrounded by allies. By your...companions. And you still choose solitude over them," he points out spitefully. "You consider them your _family_ , don't you?"

She grows embittered by his incendiary disdain, feeling her being roil and sink all at once. And she hates, too, how easily he does this to her. He knows this vulnerability of hers. Understands it. Because, whether it is something she doesn't realize or something she deliberately ignores, it had once been his very own.

"And yet, here you are. Sitting alone on a beach. Talking to _me_."

She nods, her hardened gaze fixed against the violet backdrop of the glowing red disc waning in the distance. No clouds to be seen above the rippling waves, but her eyes follow the invisible lines backwards from their vanishing point in the infinite distance—red, to violet, to blue, to grey. _All_ grey from where she sits.

"What does that say about you? You, who thrives in solitude. Who wallows in his loneliness. His gloom. Solitude already surrounds you. You came here for a reason."

His eyes peer toward this slip of a girl seated beside him. His breaths quicken, and life itself seems to awaken within this cold ghost. She's got him there, and he won't accept that.

"We're more alike than you care to know," he tells her. He knows she hates to hear that. And above all, he knows he's _right_. Her vehement stillness tells him that she knows this, too.

And she is _livid_. Her jaw sets as her lips quiver at the wordless breaths that are just so close to forming at the edge of her tongue. Her hands fold within themselves, tugging the cloth of her tunic to wrinkles. And for a moment, _everything_ surrounding her within the scope of the cosmos turns to grey.

"You think you know me," she utters in the barest breath. She raises her chin, directing her eyes away as she collects her resolve in his presence. It seems to dwindle every time she finds herself standing before him.

 _Just a shadow_.

It's as though he existed for this sole purpose.

She releases the folds of her tunic and places her hands at her sides flat against the cold, jagged rock beneath her. Her palms linger against its whetted, weathered surface. Such a resilient relic, she thinks for just that moment. How long it had been there. How long it had existed against the wind and tides. She must harden her resolve to be just like it.

She spreads her fingers apart and pushes herself to her feet. Lingers. And at last, she dares to look straight into the eyes of her shadow. She doesn't know why she should've expected anything different, anything more—he's still just a man.

"No more than I know you," she tells him with certainty. "I know what I have. What about you? What do _you_ have?"

She stares him in the eyes as though to reclaim what withering fortitude he has stolen from her. Give and take. Nothing is created nor destroyed. The laws of conservation.

"What is it that matters to _you_?"

A challenge. A reflection. A _foretelling_.

"I don't believe you're this...dark... _shadow_ you claim to be." Her words are like a defiance against his very being. "The dark doesn't have you. You're _better_. You're better than that."

Her brittle voice can hardly carry forth these words, relinquished from the very core of her heart. She tightens her lips again as she feels the need to battle back her tears, because this is something she has had to tell herself so many times before. Before any notion of the Jedi, or Luke, or the Force had ever graced her conscience. She knows it intimately. Understands it better than anybody.

"...I wish you could just _see_."

There is a merest twitch of a muscle beneath his eye as he watches her. Listens. A _tell_. (Perhaps it had been foolish to forsake his mask after all.) In this clash of wills where his mastery of the Force and lightsaber mean nothing, the only thing he thinks to do is bury himself beneath his sneering animosity.

"You're no better than _Luke_." The very name is spoken as though it were Malice itself on his tongue. " _Arrogant_. To presume to think I _need_ any saving."

"And you believe yourself to be the one to _guide_ me?" she hisses back with fire on hers. "I don't need you. You're _poison_."

 _How quickly she comes around again._

"And you're a _distraction_." He stares down at her, matches the steel of her gaze. "Guess we're both bad influences on each other."

A stalemate, as it always is with them. She is the first between them to turn away, sighing out all her vexations as she traces the imprints of her footsteps back toward her rock.

"I only tried to make _you_ see," his voice calls aloud to her.

The ancient rock's coldness bites through her to the bone as she settles back down onto it. "The blind leading the blind," she utters beneath her breath.

"You're still hanging on—"

"—You've betrayed _everything_ you've ever known."

"To become greater than everything I've left behind."

Once again their eyes meet amidst the hanging silence. The waves sweep over the shore with the whistling breeze. The universe only continues, seemingly untouched by the reverberating dissonance of their irreconcilable coexistence.

"At what cost, Ben?" she finally asks him. Truly _asks_ him. "There is sacrifice. And there is _decadence_." She searches through his gaze into the being that lies beneath this shadow before her. "It still isn't too late. Don't let yourself fall to ruin."

And it is these last words of hers that are enough to reignite the embers of his defiant ambition. Just like that, Ben is again banished away from sight.

"Stay close as you are…" he warns with a quiet, foreboding whisper, looming over toward where she sits, "I'll _destroy_ you...and drag you down with me."

With his words comes the dread of all his rooted scorn. Yet beneath the smoldering threat lies a deeply underlying bid of caution—to deter her, to keep her away. Because deep down, he knows what he is to her. What he means for her. And in the glimmer of humanity left in his eclipsed heart, he _still_ cares enough to say this much. If it means she must hate him for it, then let it be so. That much, he knows he _is_ willing to sacrifice.

"Light. Dark. Jedi. Sith. None of it matters. I don't care about any of it. And you shouldn't either."

He makes his sentiments clear for her. There is nothing to come back from. There is nothing to return to.

"Whatever serves me. Whatever gets me what I want."

 _And I take what I want._

She looks to him with those same unchanged eyes. Full of intention. Full of _sympathy_.

 _For who—me?_ _Why, Rey? Of all people, why_ me _?_

"What _do_ you want?"

"... _Everything_."

For all the certainty he commits to this answer, she isn't at all convinced of it.

"My blood-right. Everything. And no one is going to stand in my way."

He crouches down to one knee to meet her face at eye-level. Turns all of her unwelcome condolence back unto her.

"Least of all, _you_."

It is for this that she finally allows her tears to shed. Bitter, spiteful tears. How _hurtful_ he could be. She knows to expect no less of him, but it's still like a knife plunging into the heart of her very being. After all, she'd done the very same to him before. The symmetry of the Force is astounding.

A breath escapes from her lips. She purses them tightly and swallows back her tears as she turns away from this terrible shadow. (Perhaps it'd been a mistake to confront him after all.)

 _Good. Turn away. Turn away, and keep going. Don't bother looking back._

She wipes her eyes clear with the back of her sleeve. Her eyes are scraped raw by the homespun coarseness of its fabric, but she stubbornly turns her gaze back to the softly illuminated world before her. She came here to be alone, she reminds herself.

"I have nothing left to say to you."

And as though the Force itself had responded to her wishes, she is once again left to nothing but the company of her own solitude.

* * *

A/N: (I'm going to be mentioning stuff from the TLJ a bit here, so I think a mild spoiler alert might be appropriate here, just in case...)

Hello! So...I'm probably one among way too many who've been utterly sucker-punched onto the Reylo ship...train...ship(?)...'cause of TLJ. I know there's already been a thriving community for them forever now, and I don't know that I'm going to be going head first into that fandom, but damn this movie rekt my feelings about them, lol. I never rabidly shipped them before, but I was never against it either. I have to admit I really liked the dynamics developed between them in the film, and omg, using the concept of Force bonds, too? _Squeee-hee-hee-hee_ goes my inner closet teenage gurl!

But outside of SW, I've also always been fascinated by the concept of two people interacting "remotely" (conversations through correspondences/non-physical contact/etc.) and building some sort of relationship or dynamic from that. So, wtf, the movie pretty much did that, how could I _not_ play around with this? And it's been a looong time since I've last felt inspired enough to make this many story notes (enough that I should probably do _something_ with it), so I think the not stupid thing to do is to ride this high for as long as I can before it craps out (as it always eventually does...ugh, fuck you, lazy-ass, unmotivated brain.)

That said, I pretty much have this short-ish story mapped out. There's bits and pieces in between stuff that needs to be filled, but it's otherwise kind of planned out. It's...gonna be loosely formatted. I dunno. Snippets and interactions. Sort of follows some kind of trajectory. (If that sounds super vague, that's just about right with the usual crap I write, I guess.) I don't write stuff too often, but omg this ship just won't leave my brain right now, and I'd be an idiot not to get some kind of writing in. :| I'm not even sure how many readers will even actually notice what with the already **stupid** amount of Reylo anything already in existence, lol, but I do hope you guys enjoy! :D

Historically, I'm not speedy with updates, but it all really boils down to what available time I have and how many kinks need to get ironed out. I'll try my best not to take too long (and hopefully actually *finish* this whole thing before Ep. IX comes out...'cause...knowing dis bitch's busy (lazy) ass...) Anyway, please enjoy the rest! And if you so feel compelled to, please do leave a review! :) Just a small word of support or whatever floats your mind will be greatly and wholeheartedly appreciated! And if anyone has questions or just wants to drop a message, please feel free to PM me! I love to talk and share enthusiasm!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! ^_^

 _12/22/17_


	2. Desolation

A/N: It would probably be appropriate to tag a spoiler warning for TLJ on this chapter, I think! But I'm guessing anyone who's even looking at this story should have already seen the movie, right? Lol. But if you haven't yet— **GO FIX THAT NOW**. Hope you enjoy! :D

* * *

 **|| Desolation ||  
** _(The First Night)_

Fractional seconds are all it ever takes.

A blink of an eye.

A breath.

A heartbeat.

And in between it all, the whole of her descending relief, her reprieve bestowed by the peace and silence of the previous weeks past, all undone.

"...There's a familiar face."

His voice stops her cold inside and out. His sudden, unwelcome presence chills her blood, while all her pent up grievances (for his prolonged absence or for his unheralded intrusion, she isn't quite sure) seem to make it boil over. She is in the middle of straightening out her bedding for the night and at the very least, is displeased by how inopportune his untimely appearance is now.

"How long has it been, since—twenty... _two_ days?"

How markedly specific he is in this observation. _And_ how precisely accurate. She, too, had been numbering the days since their last conversation had. Somehow, it seems like no time at all when said aloud like that.

"I'm about to prepare for bed at the moment," she tells him numbly. "Can this... _not_ happen right now...?" she sighs with an exasperated shake of the head as she tosses her blanket back down onto her small cot.

She turns around toward his voice across the confined space of her quarters to see that he appears to be lounging in relative comfort, seated at a table. It looks just as dark on his side as it is within her own surroundings, so well coalesced at the boundaries that she finds it difficult to know where one starts and the other begins. Like peering into a void in space itself to see him mirrored on the other side.

And he—unperturbed, completely absent of any concern to be had. Aloof, even. Like he'd been the one whose private space had been infringed upon amid his ordinary goings-on. Although, the momentary thought that perhaps he _had_ been does briefly cross her mind.

"By all means," he shrugs. "Don't let me distract you from that."

She isn't sure whether to take his casual indifference for sarcasm or...well, what _else_ could it be? She rolls her eyes with a stiffened frown, still beside herself in disbelief at the unpleasantry of this intrusion. She is too offended to find even the merest consolation in the fact that for once, he isn't being completely belligerent, not even in the least bit contentious. So she responds in kind with a properly derisive scoff.

"What? While you sit there and watch like some—"

And just as abruptly, her premature words seem to drop off the sheer face of a cliff at the end of her incomplete thought. Confounded by her own loss for words, she gains in nothing other than annoyance. She searches in vain within her failing vocabulary for something, anything, just one appropriate word. Yet any and all that seem befitting in mind are just as quickly passed over because none are quite right. To sum up _this_ man, even the worst of him—the most vexing, most grating, most frivolous—worst, in but a single word seems like a spectacular exercise in futility.

In the face of all her roiling discontent, he merely sits in silent amusement under the guise of his cold stoicism as he waits to hear her insult. She's usually quite quick-witted and sharp of tongue, but ultimately, there is none to come this time around. How disappointing.

He shifts his expectant gaze as though to prompt her along.

"— _Some_...what?"

Nothing. _Nevermind_.

She can only manage to look like pure, dogged exasperation without any of the words to back it up. How stupid is this, her reproachful thoughts ache. What exactly are they at odds over this time? Does this even constitute as a proper quarrel?

And it's all the more insulting for her to glare at him with such resolute enmity, while he does nothing but merely gaze back—an unassuming look, straight and unchanging. It's almost unnerving to see how easily this single-minded focus comes to him, even in matters as uninspiring and banal as this. It might even seem comical if she hadn't already been preoccupied with being so maddeningly annoyed.

"I can turn around. If that makes you feel more comfortable."

Oh, and now she is beside herself at this calculated response. She is certain he is mocking her at this point. Such droll wit. Since when had he become such a master at feigning indifference? (He doesn't fake things like that.)

No, she is _certain_ he is.

Or perhaps not? He seems to be in only ever one of two moods—indifferent, or angry.

"Although I prefer to directly address the people I'm speaking to. Seems a bit...awkward...to have a conversation with you while facing the wall."

 _We're not having a conversation._

"Well, it's a wall _here_."

 _Are we_ really _having this conversation?_

"Not sure what you'd be staring at on your end."

 _No._ She can no longer suffer this a word further. She stares insipidly, lips parted in a peculiar blend of both awe and displeasure at his inane sarcasm. It is every bit as disappointing to her as her own seeming absence of wit is to him.

"Can you... _leave?_ Just LEAVE."

Like it were the simplest thing to do. She is frustrated that her mind can't even conceive of anything better (or cleverer) to say. Her sudden, peaking volume does nothing to even rattle his sharpened composure. If anything, she'd swear he was even enjoying himself a bit.

"Apparently, you still seem to be under some impression that this is my doing."

"Well _apparently_ , it wasn't your master's."

She watches him with a fine-edged gaze. Sees his seemingly earnest consideration. Eyes lowered. Brows knitted in thought.

"No...it was him," he hums pensively.

Reclining back into his chair, his eyes wander with the trails and traces of his mind's inner workings, trying to find where they all intersect and entwine. Trying to make some sense of it, because he doesn't quite understand it himself.

"That _is_ a curious thing, though...isn't it?" he finally muses aloud.

Indeed. Her own baffled thoughts begin to ponder over what unrealized things this might insinuate. Neither of them know enough of the Force's nature to understand how this link remains unsevered even after its conjurer's death.

"You killed him. It makes no sense," she thinks aloud, her voice hardly above a mumble.

Perhaps that which has been bound by the Force simply cannot be undone. Like the quantum forces. Like the laws of gravity. A thing of nature not to be questioned. It simply _is_.

Her eyes turn back across the void, only to coincide with his own. Their sights linger on in silence, and within this brief, infinitesimal pocket of space-time—a ceasefire. A blink of an eye. A breath. A heartbeat. In between it all, perfect equilibrium. All the perfection and impermanence of the Force itself, shared synchronously across two beings.

And impermanent as the Force is, it is fleeting and passes over by those fractional seconds. She remembers again that his presence is still an unwelcome one, and her ambivalence returns with her own conscious descent back to the earthen ground.

"You _killed_ your master," the words are repeated, colored this time by a wash of caution and doubt. No matter the vantage point, it had been no small deed.

"Yeah. I did," he acknowledges without so much as a flinch.

She finds herself unable to move past this thought, why it puzzles her so. That even after all of it, after they'd fought the whole of the Praetorian Guard side by side, after their departing words and following exchanges, she still questions his motives. He's said many things, yet there lies an inescapable sense—perhaps the strange empathic traces always resonant between them—that they are all but partial rationales. All conveniences to justify his actions and deeds, but none being reasons for them.

"Help me...to understand," she utters slowly. "Everything that's transpired since our first meeting...up until our last..."

How quickly it had all taken place. How brief, and so much in between. So much had changed within herself and all around. There still hasn't been a moment for her to absorb it all. The universe continues to whirl on, leaving her behind in its wake. A collateral consequence of its enduring vastness. Its unyielding movements. Life continues on.

"The choices you've made. The things you've done..."

She recalls her restraints. Her fear. The first of their encounters. His _face._ She recalls their subsequent match of wills. It'd been the first time she'd touched the Force, felt its presence and movements at her fingertips.

She recalls their duel in the forest, hardly even that—he had her on the run, like a hunter stalking prey. He'd been terrifying. He'd been relentless. And she'd been afraid, desperate to fend him off, to get away, and only once she'd recalled the flow of the Force once again unto herself, woven like the unfathomable quantum bonds stitched through body and mind, did her fortitude and tenacity reignite. Like a resurrected flame in the pitch dark. And how _dark_ it'd been then, beneath the waning, dying sun above, while in her very hands, the spark upon which new life would spring forth. Just like the cycle of the stars themselves.

She recalls their skirmish against the guards. How seamlessly they'd understood each other's intentions. To join and fight side by side, knowing the perilous stakes and entrusting their lives in the hands of the other. To _survive_. Like the prodigal knight returned, even if only for those mere moments, his departure had left her feeling like an utter, lamenting fool. Only upon searching her own heart in reflection of it all, she'd found no reason to believe he couldn't return again.

"Why? _Why?_ "

She has replayed it all. Relived all the moments, all the seconds, and she still can't fathom it, can't understand. She has gone down each possible path, only to be left lost among the endless crossroads in between them all. She doesn't even know why it disturbs her so, why it's so troubling, why it's so disheartening.

"After _everything_...why did you do it?"

Her soft, plainspoken question isn't even a specific one anymore. Her mind doesn't even register this. She doesn't care. She merely wants to _know_.

Such a loaded thing to ask, for all of its innocent simplicity. So he begins with the subject still on hand to start. It's perhaps the easiest to explain. It's the freshest in his mind. It'd come from a moment of the most clarity he had known in far too long.

"He was a narcissist. An idiot, really," he muses as though it were just some folly of a memory in the distant past. He recalls the royal fool's last few uttered words with a bitter smile. "' _I cannot be betrayed._ '" The repeated declaration is coated by his mild, shadowy amusement.

"To divulge right in the face of his foe and his own apprentice...that he'd manipulated them _both_. Failing to see that...by sowing the seeds of doubt in them, he'd only accomplished in harvesting certainty _elsewhere_ in their hearts..."

Yes, it had been a moment of indescribable clarity then.

"...Made himself _obsolete_. He became a useless husk to me at that point. Treacherous. Conniving. A _liar_."

 _'I know what I have to do.'_

"I hate being lied to, Rey. Don't you?"

It is the memory of that stormy night on Ahch-To that comes to her mind. Hearing Ben's recollection of Luke's perceived betrayal. She'd been furious. So had Luke when he'd caught the two hand in hand. And so burdened by the shameful truth that he'd kept hidden away in his drowning conscience that he'd sooner banish her from sight than relive it again. Yes, she had been blindingly infuriated. But just as fleeting as Luke's fear had been, delving into young Ben Solo's mind, so had her anger then. For all her sympathy toward the tragedy of the old Jedi Master's error, she still isn't sure whether or not she shares in this sentiment.

"'The enemy of my enemy is my friend,'" she recites. The impassive stoicism behind its proverbial claim is all the understanding she gleans from his decisions. _No_. She is not content with a conclusion so callous as this.

"Do you really think so?"

With his curiosity comes a challenge. A dare. There is something about this antiquated truism that he begs to defy.

Her eyes lower to the floor at a distant focus as she sinks onto the edge of her cot.

"Depends," she ponders. "Not all things are so straightforward." With a drawn breath, she gives a weary shrug of her small shoulders. "The more I encounter, the more I find that to be true."

 _No. Things are just not that simple._

It's all quite droll, he thinks. The purity of her observation of something he's learned long ago. He nearly snorts in his own amusement of it.

"What a surprise. Life...the galaxy—who would've thought it was actually all so _complicated_."

The sound of his derisive cynicism draws her brief, unpleasant glance. She says nothing against it before returning her sights elsewhere, just as his own drift toward her. He watches for any response. Reads her physical language. Her tells. She appears to be relatively complacent with all of it. _Interesting_. So she finds no flaws in his musings. She actually _agrees_. For once. And of course, it's something she's far too stubborn to acknowledge. That much is beyond obvious. What a troublesome pupil she would have been if Skywalker ever _had_ the proper chance to teach her. With only half a mind, he finally turns his barely attentive gaze back toward his own surroundings.

"What time is it over there...?" he asks offhandedly, catching her completely off guard yet again. He sees the dubiousness of her wary look and sighs. It was but a harmless question, truly.

"It's past midnight here." _There_. Hopefully that would put to rest some measure of her paranoia.

"Great. I suppose you should be off to bed, then," she fires back immediately with her own brand of scathing sarcasm.

"With you sitting there watching? That's a bit... _unsettling_ ," he answers, his wits hardly dulled by the tedium of their exchange. The girl really ought to learn to eat her own words.

She purses her lips at the obvious jab. "It's late enough that everyone else has gone to sleep already."

"Hm. So you're somewhere synchronous with standard time," he muses. A half jest. The detail is broad enough to be useless. Even so, his remark does manage to bring her a brief moment of alarm.

"Yes. Just like about half the populated worlds in the whole of the galaxy—so what?" she quickly hurls back at him just a hair too defensively.

For a merest moment, she worries whether she'd inadvertently divulged something crucial to him. How easily she might have slipped. And through such unsuspecting, seemingly harmless means. But no, she is careful. There is nothing in anything she's said over the course of their exchange. Through _any_ discourse of theirs thus far, really. And from this aching trepidation, she is once again slighted by how easily he's managed to topple her composure with little more than doubt. Just smoke and mirrors. So _sharp_ he must think himself to be.

And yes, he does catch on to the sudden friction he's incited between them. He is inwardly amused by how quick she is to engage when, honestly, not a single shot has been fired. There hasn't even been a weapon drawn here.

Finally, the hanging silence in this awkward stalemate begins to make her restless, shifting and pulling the focus of her eyes all about at nothing in particular.

"You...didn't _really_ answer my question." The docile little thought emerges once she realizes that in essence, he actually had _not_. Surely, that had been a deft calculation on his part. All that he'd shared had been cunningly left open for her to discern and interpret however her reasoning was so compelled to.

"Why did I kill Snoke?"

He wonders about it himself and is intrigued to find within his reasoning only half-explanations at best.

"I don't know," he utters before he thinks, and he is surprised by his own apathetic indifference toward their struggle.

He looks at her, only to see her staring in a bewildering patience for an actual answer from him. The thought of disappointing her somehow repulses his very being whole. How natural it'd been for him to feel so completely removed from the memory. He is certain that any answer he has to offer would leave her hollowed by her own disillusionment. But what bearing does that have on him? Why does she even have expectations anyway? _Stupid girl._

"It was convenient. Appropriate. Seemed like the right thing to do."

Those are the answers she wants to hear, right? Whatever the case, these are the closest things to answers he's got.

'The right thing to do.' That much, he seemed to perceive. A whisper of a conscience. Of moral decency. She knows she should be content to hear this, but it strikes her as more disturbing than it is a relief. Because after all this time, it hadn't been anything that remotely weighed on his heart. It'd hardly even been an afterthought, not until it'd come up again now, and only because she'd persisted on the question at all. No, it'd hardly troubled him in the least. How detached he'd been as he recalled the deed. This made the act akin to murder rather than deliverance. In spite of all the good that it'd done for them both, for the Resistance, for the whole of the galaxy at large at the grandest, fullest scale of things—in the end, it'd been but a triviality to him.

How a man could dissociate himself from the act of killing so profoundly. Had it meant that he simply didn't care? Or a manifestation of something beyond even hatred or anger? Everyone has a motive—to protect, to destroy, and everything in between. What, then, did this speak of toward his capabilities? That while he could be driven by pure passion like a burning zealot, he had just as much potential for brutal, cold-blooded apathy.

True demons were a thing that existed only in old stories and tales, but everyone knew, even if only symbolically, that they existed all over the galaxy in the souls of the worst beings. That had been the most terrifying notion to imagine. In Kylo Ren—in _Ben Solo_ —Rey had glimpsed the extents of his range, all the most far-reaching facets of humanity to be witnessed. The potential of someone like this was simply incomprehensible.

 _Perhaps Master Skywalker was right to be afraid._

This man had everything within him to become either of two things—a being of considerable greatness, or a horrendous fiend to be truly feared.

 _Maybe even both._

Perhaps for the first time, she starts to understand Luke's reluctance. She is certain she feels the touch of the same fear, because she recognizes quite well all that she sees in Ben. So ingrained are the parallels that they've become indistinguishable to her eyes, yet they remain intrinsic within her heart. For one such as he to have fallen so deep, led so far astray. And she, hardly at her journey's beginning, already faced with such daunting uncertainty. Without guidance. Without safety. She could trust and die by the verity of her resolve until the time comes when it wavers and crumbles as easily as it is ironclad. What could it possibly say to _her_ potential? This alone is enough to terrify her. Because she is afraid of getting lost. She is afraid of failure. She is afraid of being alone again.

 _Just like Ben._

She looks to him now without the obscuring shroud of her trepidation, her indignation, or even her lament. In his eyes she sees the consummate absence of—not a flicker of compunction to be found. No lingering cloud of ambivalence. Not even a shred of consolation or relief to be had. For the first time, she looks through his eyes and catches sight of all that lies past the wreckage of his soul's tumultuous conflict. Sees through to the pitch darkness in the far distance. How _clear_ it'd been. How vast. How empty. A barren void.

This was his clarity.

His desolation.

* * *

A/N: Yay, an update! And in less than two weeks?! WAT? Yeah, that probably isn't happening again unless we get another big holiday where pesky work and life won't get in the way of fanfic-ing. :(

Sooo...I actually thought to have this chapter be three separate parts with a loosely unifying theme, but...wow, word counts. One unusually long chapter will usually mean nothing but unusually long chapters from that point on with me. :| So...three separate uploads it is! I didn't want to wait too long between updates either because I'm scared of losing momentum. Also, I foresee more work and such coming up next month... _lesigh._ 'Kay, gotta buckle down!

Well, I hope the style of the writing isn't too loosey-goosey for you guys. I don't always stick to any specific one way to go about writing stuff. And when it comes to more...I guess feeling-y, character explore-y type bits, I like to play with less structured or less literal styles? Which...might end up being a little vague and formless in weird ways? It's like...trying to describe feelings in words without using words cause feelings aren't words...but use words—shit my dance coach says all the time. Lol. Now do the same but with MS Word! :D ...Writing is stupid.

Haha, anyway...I hope you guys enjoyed this! (Or not? S'all cool beans.) I'm definitely going to get busier come 2018, so I apologize for the slower rate of updates in advance. If you guys like this, it'd be good just to follow so you'll spot the sporadic new posts when they come. Thank you so much to everyone who has left a review, favorited, or followed! ^_^ And as always, feel free to PM me if you have any questions or comments at all.

Have a great New Year!

 _12/31/17_


	3. Equivalence

**|| Equivalence ||  
** _(The Second Night)_

Lately, her days are spent in toil when there are things and tasks about, or in solicitude when there are not, leaving her in the company of only her own restless, inadequate mind to fill the silence (and by now, she's determined that she is terrible company.) She dislikes it bitterly either way and can only find reprieve in the waning hours ticking away until nightfall, when her small little corner in the universe might finally slow to a rest. There are some things, it seems, that still haven't changed much since leaving Jakku behind.

She catches herself lamenting her fortune at times, but it is only passing. There are many, more profound things to lament, the tactful reminder lends itself. That's enough self-pity now. Silly little girls are expected to grow up eventually.

Some nights are generous enough to permit her even the smallest luxury of slumber. Most don't. Most nights, she is condemned to the unwanted, uninviting companionship with herself. Left to figure out how to pass the hours along into the dark without the agony of playing her own counterpart. And she thinks it rather strange, really—this has never been a problem for her before. No, she is _quite_ familiar with this expectation. So why, then, does it no longer suffice? The intrusive curiosity jostles her thoughts incessantly, and she still can't quite place it. This alone is enough to exhaust her heart's inconsolable discontent.

As the door to her quarters slides shut behind her, she discovers upon passing the threshold that this is to be one of the most unforgiving nights of this kind to weather. Even the thickened walls of her last bastion of privacy cannot keep the shadows away. (Why did she even think they could?)

"...Does this have to happen right now?" she speaks to the air with near-automated precision, stealing away the first words before they can be claimed.

The heavy footfalls receding from her earshot come to an immediate halt. She glances over her shoulder to see the looming tower of a shadow at a standstill. Like two phantoms passing the other by across intersecting planes. She stares at the heavy drapery of his thick black cloak hanging from his shoulders. So he's back to obscuring himself beneath these guises. It seems, though, that he has abandoned that mask of his for good now. Perhaps for the better, she thinks privately to herself. It is monsters who don masks as they walk upon the mortal universe. He claims to be one of them. She is not so convinced he is.

Only steps away from the door leading out of his own private chambers, he is bound for nowhere in particular, a realization to come only now at the convenience of her sudden, fortuitous intrusion. The inconceivable _audacity_ of this girl, to presume to be the one so offended. Had she stayed that unwitting, sharp tongue of hers, he may well have simply gone without a breath's notice, saving her all the ire and indignation she has come to epitomize all too eagerly. Always such a temper on this one.

 _You're no Jedi. Stop even trying to pretend._

Is this what others must contend with in their dealings with him? He almost feels apologetic. _Almost_.

There is something to be said about fire that scorches like hers. It never wanes. It never burns out. Even engulfed against the dark, it burns on. Incinerates. Boys must be mindful of the fire they play with.

When he turns to look at her, he sees it in her gaze searing through his very being. Funny how some things so cold can absolutely burn.

"Well. Since we're already here," he says plainly. There is a facetiousness beneath his otherwise perpetually even-tempered tones. An arid taste that he makes certain does not elude her senses.

 _No. To hell with you. With all of this._

Her lips stiffen rebelliously while she wills them tightly shut. Her will wins, and she shakes her head, averts her eyes, pays him no mind. The dismaying thought only dawns on her then that she had come to her room this night with no intention in mind. She had expected the familiar silence, after all. While away the time until she's sick of it. Until she's sick of herself. Usually, she manages to tire her own mind out before sunrise and finds some measure of sleep.

Stars, Gods, Great Force—how she _loathes_ to be alone.

 _So now, when you finally have company, you do nothing but ache and complain. Isn't this what you wanted? Insufferable. Such a wonder no one likes to be around you._

She ignores the berating voice of her own fractious thoughts as she minds her hands—finds _something_ to busy herself with. At least seem like it.

Her back is to him as he watches her flustered haphazardness. She refuses to even look at him. She can be so juvenile, he thinks. But there is something to commend in her resolve. Her _will_. One could only imagine what such a will could accomplish with the Force as its conduit. Wretched child. All the exuberance, the tenacity of a youngling at play without the craft, without any proficiency to shape it in those small artless hands.

He is a solicitous bystander to her callow simplicity. A benefactor who has offered his experience time and again. (Among the vast spectrum, it isn't a considerable store of knowledge, but she need not know this. And it is still _something_.) And so predictably, like the utter child that she is, she still stubbornly refuses. Fine. An incorrigible illiterate who refuses to learn.

It's very nearly excruciating for his sight to bear. (The few times were plenty enough.) How profane. How unrefined. How _vulgar_. It is ugly. Unsightly. Appalling.

And yet he finds his eyes drawn again and again ( _always_ ) toward this abomination of a being, unable to look away.

How his eyes are drawn now still. And where they meet hers at the crossing in between, she seems to siphon away the very light of the eclipsing question he has held in his chest, one that leaves him waning by the passing moments. One that has plagued him with an anguishing need to know the answer to since its conception burrowed deep within the womb of his wallowing mind. Without even a flicker of effort, her gaze is all that is needed to compel him to voice it.

"There is something I've been meaning to ask you—"

"—Ask another day. I'm not doing this now. I'm not talking to you."

A cutting, curt answer laced between the letters, dripping at the fringes of her breaths in her agitation. He sees it in her wayward gestures, how she picks up some random thing, anything, places it elsewhere without a sense of awareness to be had.

Of all times for that steadfast determination of hers to catch fire. Admirable as it is, it is every bit as much _impossibly_ petulant. He has no mind now to deal with her ever mercurial mood. Perhaps any other night, but not now. There is a wrenching point of uncertainty that has become imperative for him to resolve. One that even all the infinite resources at the Supreme Leader's disposal could not reconcile. One that he _knows_ can be answered definitively by her right now.

He lowers his eyes, feeling his whole being tense at the familiar simmer of his rising temper within. He knows when his patience is tried to the bounds of its limits. Considering all the minor annoyances, all the inane little hitches and setbacks he has been dealing with amongst his army (its intermittent lack of competence is simply extraordinary at times), he is somewhat marveled by his own subdued composure at the moment. Only in _her_ presence ever, it seems. Another incomprehensible talent of hers.

"I'll leave it to you, then?"

His tongue can hold an edge just as sharp. It's only a game of wills, after all. Whose iron-forged skin is thicker?

"Business as usual. Sitting in front of your little window? Or in the corner of your room? The foot of your bed?"

The words do land blows. They do cut. She doesn't see him sneering at her clumsy attempt to hide her indisposition, suddenly feeling exposed now. Eyes flickering about toward each corner of these confines except where he lingers in the shadows.

 _You don't think I know?_

"You'd prefer to wallow in an empty room in the quiet, in the dark?"

It isn't so much that he sees.

"Itching for someone, _some_ company—a passing stray, a ghost? Hell, even your own damn _mind_ pretending to be someone else talking back to you—"

He, of all people, should know it best.

The surrounding air is dampened by the words he pours forth. Each like an uttered curse. Brutal coldness. Embittering. Because at their abysmal core, it is himself of which he speaks. All of these things, he assumes of her because he _knows_.

And he knows, too, that their minds seem to convene in these most solitary moments that coincide between one another. Though what draws them, he still cannot define. There must be some intent, some desire. Perhaps even a subconscious wanting. He'd deny it to death, and he knows she would too.

How repulsed he is by the slightest, _cursed_ glare of doubt from within. How it infuriates him to no end—that he can never extinguish it entirely from his being. And how especially true it seems in all manners concerning this simple scavenger girl from Jakku.

This _damned_ girl. A mere word, a mere glimpse of her gaze—so insightful in its ignorance, so perceptive in its blindness—it is all it ever takes to give his uncertainty form. A _face_. For him, this has become a veritable fact as absolute as all the rest of the universe set before his eyes.

 _It's all_ your _doing._

This infernal girl and her unholy gift. She's given it breath and life in a barren place where nothing should ever have been able to take root. Or perhaps she's simply awakened that which had always been buried dormant within him. The inborn, inseverable shadow of his beating, bleeding heart. This puzzling miracle-girl and her exalted touch.

In either case, it seems at the very least fitting (or rather convenient) to relinquish all the guilt unto her. She makes it quite easy to do when she lashes back with her words, carving across his own. Teeth and claws bared like an assaulted feral beast.

"—Do we _really_ have to do this?!"

It is too much for her to hear. What he speaks is too accurate, too true. Painfully so, and she hates it. As much as she detests the lies from the most awful flaming tongues, she finds some searing truths just as harsh. The ones that have burned her deepest, scorched through her flesh to the very core, have all been spoken by _him_. Why must he be so truthful? So _brutally_ honest?

 _Lie just this once._

No, she doesn't want to hear it. Not from his breath. Ever.

"Ben...Kylo Ren— _whichever_ —" she seethes across the room, "why, why— _WHY_...are we doing this?"

She is indignant and very nearly shouts at him, gesturing her indescribable turmoil along with the cadences of her trembling voice at this loathsome exchange. At everything.

"Listen—" he speaks gravely against the undercurrents of her scorn.

"—No, I'm done."

A stark dismissal at the shake of her head. She tears her sights away from her contemptible ghost while her hand finds her datapad lying close by. ( _At last._ ) She'll sit and read tonight whether he's fucking there or not.

"Listen...REY!"

He advances a step. His voice still inadvertently roars despite his restraint in the face of her brazen disregard.

"I SAID _NO_!"

She returns tenfold like a flood, the flaring wake of her outburst rushing down upon them. But while it surges over in a crashing torrent with a force that could crumble walls and shatter bones, it passes into deadened silence and stillness just as abruptly, washing away every trace of itself in its receding overflow back into nothingness.

At the onset of her impulsive anger, she realizes too late once her datapad has already left her hand, recklessly flung across the room. She threatens this ghost, wants it gone, but she can do nothing to ward him away. It shouldn't come as any surprise. It's what they do.

There is a slightest pulse of a flinch in his muscles as he sees the device fly at him, but he doesn't step away. He doesn't even raise his hand to halt it through the Force as his reflexes are so well-trained to do in the face of any coming danger. He is but an observer in her world, the looming phantom watchman gazing from another plane. His eyes merely follow its pathway until it passes right through him, smashing against the far wall in a flicker before fading to black.

 _Ah. There it is. I see it. I see_ you _._

Never once does his arctic gaze remotely trail away from her. He continues to stare at her bald-faced anger even as it sinks into self-conscious mortification at her own unchecked impulse. To see, like a humiliated child post-tantrum, that she'd gained nothing by it before the wreckage of her own doing. Such a temper on this girl. She ought to be more careful before she burns everything of hers to ash with that fire. It is a bleak and lonely hell for one to walk. He would know. He still has yet to find the path out of his own. And he witnesses now so clearly—fire like this, like _hers,_ is one never meant for a Jedi's hands to wield.

Her entire frame grows heavy. She feels as though she's sinking, pulled beneath by nothing but gravity into the flood waters. Her hand is carried weightlessly along the gentle currents, drifting over her lips as though to cover a muted gasp over her stilled breath. It sweeps across her face in a daze, rakes through her hair until her fingers find all the snags, unkempt tangles left by the hard day's labor. She purses her lips tightly before letting a sigh escape from them. Her fluttering, anxious eyes dart away at the sting of her swelling embarrassment. The insufferable unease makes her restless again, and she paces and turns here and there, to nowhere, toward nothing in particular. Just do anything but stand quietly and stare.

The unexpected sound of a small, scornful laugh makes him think she might be regaining some measure of her composure at last.

"Or...what?"

She dares to look him in the eyes again, but he sees clear past the reproachful pretense of this newly formed mask she hides behind. He knows her intent. This is a familiar, falsely uncaring bravado meant to incite him, to repel him, drive him off. She tries to taunt him further with her dispossessed gaze, her cynical tone, her droll manner of disdain. But the eyes linger too long to be as apathetic as she means to seem, the voice a touch too coarse to be sincere in any amount of belligerence. Her temperament too controlled, too neatly packaged, too convenient. These exquisitely crafted lines of hers are quite finely spun, but his even finer eyes can discern and decipher them true enough.

"What are you going to do?" her challenge comes with a rising glance.

A single step's pace brings her closer into his boundaries. Tests him.

"Run me through with that thing?" she derides with a goading nod toward the hilt hanging pompously on his belt. What an ostentatious weapon for a boy.

"Go ahead."

Another step.

"For _both_ of our amusement—go ahead and try."

For once, he is able to catch himself before falling head first into this pitfall. Fire with fire. He knows what she aims to do. But he won't give her a damn thing. Not this night.

She watches as his hand reaches to grasp his lightsaber hilt, inwardly more exasperated than surprised by his seeming predictability. Even so, even when she knows there is no danger here, that even the Force does not permit it across its reach, even when there is nothing to fear in the presence of a mere spectre of a man, she feels the creep of the numbing chill from within. It is as though the flames have all been blown out by the surrounding darkness. The quiet death of a star.

Even as her pulse rushes, her coursing blood fails to warm her body. She does not stir as her eyes watch his fingers curl easily around the hilt (one she'd learned at first touch was not meant for much smaller hands like her own.) This action is like instinct to him. His hands know it by rote without any guidance from the Force. It is second nature to him to hold this weapon in his grasp, to ignite it, to cut down all standing in his path before him.

But he does none of these things. Without pulling his gaze from her, he sets the heavy metal hilt down on some surface close by. An armistice.

This is the first time she witnesses him quell his temper, a self-control that she does not yet realize bewilders even himself. Her apprehension isn't dispelled completely (it never does in his presence), but she finds her inner tethers loosening by each passing breath when she meets his eyes. One by one, they uncoil. Until all that remains are the ones between each other.

They may shout in each other's faces all the bitter venom and spite, yet these Force-woven tethers endure it all, leaving them in the devastation of each other's ruinous discord. They are bound by them for reasons beyond anything either can conceive. May as well make the most of it. Though it seems futile to speak a word without coming upon utter contention and dissidence. If this is truly their polar nature, then what is the purpose? Why must their lines cross and become entangled like so? All they do is deride one another, at total odds and without any means for recompense. So they _must_ speak. They _must_ come to equivalence.

 _Will that satisfy the Force?_

"Unless you have something constructive, something worthwhile to say...will you _please_ go?"

Her voice has dwindled to a breath, calmed somewhat by both her weariness and her sobering sense of reason. He may be accustomed to it, but there is nothing to come out of her anger. She knows too well when it ignites, only to hope its capricious flames will quell and extinguish as quickly as they burn. It is worst when it dwells, and it becomes a most unwelcome cloud cast upon her conscience. She will hope it brings rain to drown the fire, but these are clouds of ash and cinder. No amount of uncounted years passed on her scorching desert homeland will ever make it bearable.

His eyes are pensive as they lower. There is hesitation, and she sees it. There is a desire—something he wants—and she feels it. And all of it, just like the earliest days her eyes had ever caught sight of his own, she sees the despondence of his conflict, the incessant storm still whirling, still unrelenting.

Too much movement. Too many voices.

He just wants an answer.

A breath.

"...Is it true?" his brittle voice sounds. How plaintive his expression looks to her. "Leia is alive?"

 _He doesn't know._

Of course he wouldn't. She and her allies of the Resistance know well enough that Leia Organa is very much alive. She doesn't know that the rest of the galaxy has little more than tales and rumor to go by. Conflicting reports. Incompetent agents. Unreliable sources. Nothing but chatter.

Now dwindling and pursued, their band has been forced to become ever more reclusive. She blinks in uncertainty over how she must answer this, whether it be wise to even answer him at all. But she peers at him once more, studies his face, his gaze, his gestures, and her heart pales to see not a vengeful man on the hunt, but a boy, a _son_ who must know if his mother is still living.

Silent, she presses her lips together and softly nods.

The closest thing to a response he offers comes in a raw, hitched breath, and it is all it takes to betray his warring conscience. Not that she can't already see. It's there, naked and bare right before her eyes. Written all over his being, imprinted on his very soul. Like a signature, a thing purely of his own only she alone can recognize so clearly beyond all the obscurity. An enigma for another time, he thinks. He has no mind to ponder on this tonight. (He has other nights to do so.)

 _Leia is alive._

His memory takes him back to the cockpit of his fighter vessel that day. He remembers his trembling hand hesitant on the trigger, the cruiser's deck in the sight of his crosshairs. How easy and quick the deed should have been. How it'd come to be one of the most difficult trials he'd ever faced. Failed or surpassed, even he still finds himself uncertain of.

When he gazes ahead across this space once again, he finds her staring back. He knows she sees more than he means to show. Sees _too_ much. It nearly burrows right through the fortitude of his very being, so he blinks and turns away before his walls crumble any further. She may be ill-trained in the ways of the Force, but her eyes are already so astute. Much more than she knows.

Following a heavy, tenuous pause, he finally nods his plain acknowledgement of her answer. She hopes to see more from him, but he won't relinquish anything beyond this. It is all he can spare tonight. His ambivalent heart is content enough with what she's given him—the simple _knowing_ —and he is far too selfish to offer anything in return for her benevolence. The things she would demand of him, he knows he is incapable of yielding. After all, she is no less selfish than he with such desires. She simply believes herself better at hiding them.

For that instant, he stands in plain view of her, in all his lament, all his melancholy and self-hatred in a fraction of a moment. That is all it takes to brand her memory with this image of him. Her eyes shut and open again in an instant to see it all gone. He is gone. Leaves her with nothing but a wistful, longing illusion of relief. She feels the void from within as surely as the space surrounding her now, and it gives her none of the consolation she expects from his absence. Lowering her eyes from the empty expanse of her small quarters, she finally releases a long withheld breath.

There will be no reading tonight. She has no mind to dawdle away the hours, now exhausted to the bones by all of just the previous passing minutes. It is a trial merely to _speak_ with him. (And already, she languishes at the profound loss of the struggle far more deeply than she would ever care to admit.)

She doesn't idle before finding her covers. As she settles into her small bed, her tired eyes lament to find in the corner of their vision the poor remains of her datapad strewn against the opposite wall of her room.

 _Rose will have to take a look at that tomorrow._

Hoping to push the rueful thought from mind, she extinguishes the lights in her quarters. All becomes stark and silent as the rest of their compound, and she is rendered sightless once again by the night's enveloping darkness. Lie there, quiet and still. Count the seconds away. The minutes. The hours. Like tallies etched onto the walls for each solitary night passed in the lonely desert sands.

And there is still too much movement. Still too many voices. The dark does nothing to put them to rest.

But given enough time, the dark does become less blinding. The eyes adjust. They find the edges, the outlines, until the silhouettes become clearer. Then the details give way to the shapes and forms. Clarity comes into focus as they continue to reach and grasp the space all around in the absence of light to lead them. It is as though sight becomes tactile then. One must _feel_ in order to navigate the world in darkness.

Her eyes shut for the last time that night, and the world illuminates again.

* * *

A/N: Apologies...I'm so sorry! I really meant and tried to get this update out sooner, but...omg work and stuff. x_x Wardrobe-ing on the next show opening soon at our local opera (yeah suck it, February evenings...didn't need 'ya anyway), and my sleep deprived ass could not get a single decent sentence of anything down on the word doc these past weeks. Argh! Was so close to completion, but it was an absolute, unpresentable trainwreeeck! So yeh, I really wanted to take the time to do a thorough revision and proofreading before putting this update out. Hopefully, enough of it has been salvaged to something halfway readable! :D I dunno, I was like half-conscious through most of writing this, lol.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the read, and thanks to all who are following along. It's gonna be a marathon, so uh...you know, hang on. Lol. I'm not a fast updater by any stretch, but I promise that they'll come. As always, please feel free to follow, leave a review, or even drop a PM if you like! ^_^ Oh yeah, I guess Valentine's Day is coming soon? Uh...happy...that, I guess.

... ...

:D

 _2/11/18_


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